You’ll recognize two of them as our past and future guest quartets.

The competitions can be viewed as a webcast at: https://www.bhswebcast.com/ There you will find all the information you need, including price.

BCC Sing-outs

Dead Creek Picnic, Frankenmuth, June 23, 2015 (photos by Herb Judd)

ONLINE AT www.bigchiefchorus.org

Vol. 15, No.2 (#171) July 1, 2015

Barbershop Harmony Society, Pittsburgh Limited Edition , the Teubers, and the Owenses, are headed to Pittsburgh. The Barbershop International competition is June 28 thru July 5, but the main events are: Tue/30 – Evening – Collegiate Quartet contest Wed/1 – All day – Quartet Quarterfinals Thu/2 – Afternoon – Quartet Semifinals Evening – AIC Show

Fri/3 – All day – Chorus contest

Sat/4 – Evening – Quartet Finals, 5:15 to 9:30 EDT

Going into the Quartet competition, the top five qualifying quartets are: Throwback A Mighty Wind

The Big Chief Chorus returned to the banks of the Cass River for • The Hands of Time the Annual Dead Creek Picnic, about 23 strong, on the Parks and Rec bus • With a Song in My Heart shared with other chapters. Attendance this year was estimated at 180, Thanks guys for all you do to make the BCC successful. I appreciate your but retiring brat cooker John Voss kept the brats coming. Dave Flattley time, effort and your commitment to singing in the barbershop style! emceed the program, which included eighteen quartets, and five choruses from Flint, Pontiac-Waterford, Grosse Pointe, Saginaw Bay, and AROUND THE PATCH Huron Valley. The “Chief Pontiac” reps, (as we were introduced), sang “You Tell Quartets in abundance at rehearsals – three on June 9 and five on June Me Your Dream” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’” under Tom Blue’s direction. 16, including: 4 Ur Pleasure sang for the second year in a row. Bachmann, Barnes, Blue, Carinci, Cowlishaw, DeNio, Downie, Chuck Murray and Tom Blackstone reconnected with Bob Frye, Keith, McFadyen, Melkonian, Murray, Perry, Pioch, McCaffrey and Joe Baldiga ( Northbound Sound , four years ago) to Schreiner, Stone, sing "Trickle, Trickle" and "River of No Return." Sturdy, Teuber, and Wallace. Limited Edition sang “Swing Down Medley” with Jacob Other recent quartets have included: Welty at Lead. Doig, Domke, Greenwood, Holm, Moss, Northey, Oberstadt, Five Cannibals (McFadyen, Frye, Melkonian, Cowlishaw) Owens, Roy, and Schroeder. sang “Old St Louis.” And we occasionally see: Pioneer champions sang including Rolls Voice (Doc Mann, Marshall, Mazzara, McMain, and Shew up there. Gillingham, Bruce LaMarte, T.C. Conner, and T. R. Gerard), and Pioneer That’s 34 guys willing to sing without “collateral support.” collegiate rep Frontier (Chris Cordle, Aaron Pollard, Brandon Smith, Cody Harrell). Up-and-coming mixed quartet The Heights also sang. Gil Schreiner’s mother, Lucille , died June 17 at the age of 88. Lucille was deputy probate registrar for 18 years for Oakland County. She was a long Log Cabin Days, June 27 time member of Peace Lutheran Church in Waterford, where she taught Oops, got rained out.  Sunday school and sang in the choir. She enjoyed gardening and was an accomplished seamstress and pianist. From Director Tom: Remember three "triangles" Quartets 1. face The 4GVN quartet competed in the finals of the Hamburg 2. upper body (including expressiveness without hands) Family Fun Fest on June 20. There was a crowd of about 250 3. head to toe (full body expression including the face) people cheering on their favorites in the three groups: 12 and …as we work on these songs for our Grammy show: under, 13-18, and over 18 (and they didn’t even ask our age!). • There's No Business Like Show Business There was some really good talent, and the whole event was • What a Wonderful World entertaining for the audience. The adult category was all young, • It Been a Hard Day's Night • Can You Feel the Love Tonight female voices singing karaoke-style – except us – and we were well • Ain't Misbehavin' received with “It’s a Good Day!” followed by “Tee Idle Dum Dum.” • Cabaret They said we had four minutes; so we did the two-song package. • Under the Boardwalk Did we win? No, but it was fun! Medical Eric Domke is recuperating from a fall, with a painful right thigh.

District

Great Lakes Harmony Brigade Seven Chiefs sang in the sixth GLHB, May 29,30. The weekend included five performances at Okemos High School and Chippewa Middle School, the semifinal competition Friday night, and the grand show and the quartet finals Saturday night. Next year’s event is May 13-15, 2016. “(Ex-Chief) Ron Arnold was not only present at this year's Great Lakes Harmony Brigade, he sang in three (yes three) show and contest quartets and one of those quartets captured third place in the Saturday night contest. That winning quartet also featured Ray Sturdy on Baritone. Not to be outdone, Chuck Murray's quartet tied with Ron and Ray's quartet for a third place finish. Tom Blackstone did them both one The quartet also sang at Brightmoor Church, Sunday, June 28, better. His quartet finished in second place. A great time was had by all with Cowlishaw subbing for Domke at Baritone. this year and you can bet we'll hear some great songs from Limited Edition in the weeks to come.” Limited Edition -Ray Sturdy …sings at the Clarkston Library, Tuesday, June 30, 7 p.m.

Bidin’ Our Time is on hold while Roger recovers, and Ray returns from his northern vacationing.

Chapter 2015 Performances thru June: 66 gigs to 803,472 people

MEMBERSHIP : (at 51) Renewals: Jim McMain (4),Tom Jackson (16), Neil Braun (25), Bill Dabbs (44), Fred McFadyen (48) Due in July: Mann Overdue : Ted Prueter, Bob Stephenson, Charlie Perry Bye -Bye : Mike Doyle

July Birthdays : Tom Jackson (1), Chuck Murray (1), Bill Maxfield Big Chief attendees included: Murray, Sturdy, Perry, Doig, Arnold, (29), Dar Johnson (31) Blackstone, and Cowlishaw DOC is going to be having its annual chapter picnic on Monday, July 13th and any barbershoppers in the area are welcome to come on by and join us. We’ll be singing, naturally, and we encourage quartets, choruses and other ensembles to come on by and join in the fun. ‘shoppers and their families from Grosse Pointe, Livingston, Rochester, Pontiac-Waterford, Wayne and Windsor have been invited. Brats, burgers, hot dogs, buns, pop, and beer will be provided. Bring a dish to share. Jim Kunz and George Burkett, (248) 330-5342

Quartet Boot Camp, July 18 Any Chiefs going?

International Friday morning’s school visits were a highlight. Musical Island Boys

Our current champion quartet entertained on the Today show, Saturday morning, June 27.

The Barberpole Cat Songbook Vol. II is designed to bridge the gap between Polecat songs and music at a difficulty level that many of our Harmony Brigades sing. This book is designed for the member who has Saturday night’s show featured the whole chorus. "graduated" from the standard Polecat book. You'll find songs in this songbook you are already familiar with; indeed, for many chapters, June 8 was Barbershop Harmony Day in Michigan, our 75th anniversary tunes or "Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)" are basically de facto Polecats. We have your original works - like the Norm Harmony Explosion is July 9-11 at Central Michigan University. The Starks piece - as well as tried-and-true favorites. Pontiac Waterford chapter is helping to support five students from Milford High School and one from Rochester Adams. • After You've Gone • Bright Was The Night D.O.C. Picnic, Monday, July 13 • Caroline 5:00 p.m. (food at 6:00) • (When It's) Darkness On The Delta Sylvan Lake Community Ctr, 2456 Pontiac Dr, Sylvan Lake, 48320 • Drivin' Me Crazy • From The First Hello To The Last Goodbye The goal is to make searching for arrangements easier! There • Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby / We All Fall are three different ways to search for an arrangement, by Song, by • Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart) Arranger or by selecting a Type. • I Don't Know Why (I Just Do) Check it out at • I've Been Workin' On The Railroad http://www.barbershopconnections.com/arrangements/ • Lida Rose /Will I Ever Tell You • Over The Rainbow Tom Gentry’s New Web Site We sing so many Gentry arrangements. But there are many Our flagship site www.barbershop.org sports a clean new look that will more. They are presented on a new web site at display beautifully on all devices. A new platform should speed http://gentryarrangements.com development of more kinds of content, and enhanced search capabilities will make it easier to find, enjoy, and share with your friends. Vocal Technique – Why Don’t Barbershoppers Yodel?

The new design will also integrate many previously-separated sub-sites The short answer is because their goal is to smooth out the such as barbershopconvention.com, harmonyuniversity.org and others, passaggio, not to exaggerate or dramatize it. into a single, searchable location. Now for the longer answer. Human voices have at least two distinct vocal registers, called Most notable will be the redesigned, super-speedy, mobile friendly the "head" and "chest" voices. Falsetto is an "unsupported" register Harmony Marketplace, which will migrate to a new address at forcing vocal cords in a higher pitch without any head or chest voice air shop.barbershop.org. A robust new ecommerce platform will make it support. faster and easier to shop for recordings, sheet music, apparel, and more. The range of overlap between registers is the passaggio . You should see immediate improvements in receiving your orders, as Experienced singers can control their voices in this range, easily your online purchases move directly from website to our shipping switching between registers. department. You'll get immediate email confirmations for placing an Yodeling is a form of singing which involves repeated and rapid order, see it move into our processing department, and receive UPS or changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register (or "chest voice") US Postal Service tracking codes when it leaves Harmony Hall. and the high-pitch head register or falsetto. Repeated alternation between registers at a singer's passaggio pitch range produces a very Sheet music search has been beefed up, with ability to search on distinctive sound. For example, in the famous "Yodel - Ay - EEE - Oooo", arranger, title, and category. the "EEE" is sung in the head voice while all other syllables are in the chest voice. MEDIA "The basic yodel requires sudden alterations of vocal register from a low-pitched chest voice to high falsetto tones sung on vowel Finding an arrangement sounds: AH, OH, OO for chest notes and AY or EE for the falsetto. Barbershop Connections has just launched an exciting new Consonants are used as levers to launch the dramatic leap from low to feature... ARRANGEMENTS! high, giving it its unique ear-penetrating and distance-spanning power." Over 12,000 are listed on a new Arrangements page and lots The best places for Alpine-style yodelling are those with an echo. more arrangements are still to be added... Ideal natural locations include not only mountain ranges but lakes, rocky gorges or shorelines, and high or open areas with one or more distant senior, he was in the honors chorus. rock faces. He became an assistant to Director Dr. Deborah Wolfe-Sebetic, Listen to Gene Autry’s 1929 recording of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue adjudicating the classes, taking them to competitions, and doing some Yodel No. 5.” directing. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AAutry Zach also got into theater and was in six shows: Titanic - The BlueYodel5.ogg Musical, Into The Woods, Spotlight on Broadway 3, The Phantom of the (Thanks to Google) Opera, The Crucible, and My Fair Lady. Zach also sang for three years in the Flint Festival Chorus under How to do Kegel exercises for men – More on those lower breathing Bradley Bloom. They were telecast with the Symphony Orchestra in muscles. Christmas performances. “It takes diligence to identify your pelvic floor muscles and In all, he was in eight different choruses during his senior year. understand how to contract and relax them. Here are some pointers: After graduation he attended the Gerard R. Ford Job Corps “Find the right muscles. To identify your pelvic floor muscles, Center in Grand Rapids, studying Culinary Arts and Office Administration. stop urination in midstream or tighten the muscles that keep you from When he returned to Clarkston, he worked in pizzerias for two years, but passing gas. These are your pelvic floor muscles. If you contract your was unsatisfied with that work. He moved to Waterford, to live with his pelvic floor muscles while looking in the mirror, the base of your penis aunt and uncle, and to work at Meijer, selling electronics in the Media will move closer to your abdomen and your testicles will rise.” Department. Now! Relax them when you sing! When he searched for choruses in the Waterford area, he discovered the Big Chief Chorus and has been an enthusiastic Tenor ever Meet Zachary Schroeder since. He loves the close harmony and his first experience in an all-male group. He is in the process of joining the BHS. Zach was born and raised in Clarkston and graduated from What’s Up, Bruce Brede? Brandon High School. He is the oldest of four children of his mom, a baker, and his father who has passed away. His musical involvement began in 8th grade because his close friends were in the choir. Zach auditioned and joined and sang all four years. He began as tenor, tried baritone for a while, but his high notes are stronger than his low notes, and returned to tenor. He competed and received high rankings in solo and Bruce and Bonnie have just sold their Watkins-Lake-front home ensemble music. As a junior and (of 48 years) and will be moving into Fox Run Novi as of July 15. This puts them closer to their two Ann Arbor kids, but further from Big Chief Assistant Directors: Fred McFadyen, Mike Frye, & Bill Holmes Chorus rehearsals. (Their third child is retired in Seattle.) President: Jack Teuber (248-334-3686) Bruce has been a very active member of the chorus for 18 years. Past President: Doc Mann (248-628-0189) He VP: Chapter Dev: Eric Domke • was a top show program ad seller VP: Music and Performance: Roger Holm • arranged our holiday bus tours VP: Marketing & PR: Open • managed our show cast parties Secretary: Charlie Perry • led the Lead section Treasurer: Jim Owens • he wrote a series of 16 monthly columns in Smoke Signals, Members at Large - Fred Pioch, Ray Sturdy, Jeff Doig, Walt DeNio entitled “Sound and Music” in 2006-07 Chorus Manager: Gene Downie • sang in the Celebration quartet (with Bill Dabbs, Greg Moss, Captain Sunshine: Bill Maxfield and Jack Teuber - after Don Denooyer’s death), and Harmony Section Leaders: McFadyen, Stephenson, Cowlishaw, Moss Way before that Music Team: Holm, Blue, Cowlishaw, Doig, Frye, McFadyen, Moss, • led health walks at Higgins Lake Murray, Prueter, Stephenson, Mazzara • and championed “Has Anybody Seen My Kitty?” for many years Bulletin Editor: John Cowlishaw, (248-891-4498)

Their health is still good. Bonnie’s cancer scare is in the past. And… They still walk a bit, though down from Bruce’s five marathons in his 50s. (He’s 84.) But they do feel the diminution of energy as they labor on Sing… their move. … as if you were entertaining deaf people with body movements and expression. CALENDAR, (With Performance Times; Warm-ups 30’- 45’ earlier) … as if you were entertaining blind people with your voice and music. Jun 30, T, 7:00 BCC Practice, WOAC Jul 1-5 BHS International, Pittsburgh Thought for the Day Jul 7, T, 7:00 BCC Practice, WOAC From William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Speech, 1950. In place of Jul 8, W Golf outing, Tanglewood & Art Carinci’s poet, think “musician.” Jul 13, M, 4:00 D.O.C. Picnic, Sylvan Lk Comm. Ctr. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is Jul 14, T, 7:00 BCC Practice, WOAC immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an Jul 18, Sa Quartet Boot Camp, Okemos inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of Jul 21, T, 7:00 BCC Practice, WOAC compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is Jul 26 – Aug 2 Harmony University, Belmont Univ., Nashville, TN to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by Jul 28 T, 7:00 BCC Practice, WOAC lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope Aug 4, T, 7:00 BCC Practice, WOAC and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the Nov 7, Sa, 7:00 71 st BCC Show “BCC Does the Grammys” glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. CHAPTER LEADERSHIP Director: Thomas Blue (248-814-9627)